A gesture remote-controlling operation apparatus has conventionally been known. As described in Japanese Patent No. 3941786, for example, the gesture remote-controlling operation apparatus includes: image capturing means, such as a CCD camera, to capture the positions and motions of the driver's hands on the steering wheel; and operation instructing means to output operation commands to the corresponding on-board devices in accordance with the positions and motions of the hands captured by the image capturing means.
A conventional gesture remote-controlling operation apparatus such as one disclosed in Japanese Patent No. 3941786 outputs operation commands to the corresponding on-board devices in accordance with the gestures, that is, the positions and motions of the operator's hands. For this reason, the conventional gesture remote-controlling operation apparatus requires a complex logic to determine the gestures. In addition, capturing the positions and motions of the operator's hands correctly and accurately is difficult. For example, small differences in gestures among different operators cannot be clearly distinguished. Accordingly, there have been such inconveniences as erroneous activation of the gesture remote controller due to errors in the capturing gestures, and output of wrong operation commands to on-board devices.
In this respect, as described in Japanese Patent Application Laid-open No. 2006-312347, a technique has been proposed which prevents the gesture remote controller from being activated erroneously by controlling the activation of the gesture remote controller in accordance with the closing of a through-hole provided in the steering wheel with a driver's hand. This technique, however, has various inconveniences. For example, the technique premises provision of the through-hole in the steering wheel in the manufacturing process of the steering wheel. Accordingly, it is difficult to provide the gesture remote-controlling operation apparatus as a retrofitted option. In addition, the possible position of the through-hole is quite limited. Likewise, the possible position of the image capturing means to capture whether the through-hole is closed or not is quite limited. In addition, once the gesture remote controller is activated, the gesture remote-controlling operation apparatus outputs operation commands by capturing the gestures, that is, the positions and motions, of the operator's hands as in the case of the technique disclosed in Japanese Patent No. 3941786. Accordingly, the technique of Japanese Patent Application Laid-open No. 2006-312347 also requires a complex logic, and is likely to capture gestures incorrectly, resulting in outputs of erroneous operation commands to the on-board devices.